


Sunset and Stolen Wine

by Inquartata (mackillian)



Series: Tessera [7]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: F/F, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-04 03:52:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16339313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mackillian/pseuds/Inquartata
Summary: Thaia isn't the best at planning ahead.





	Sunset and Stolen Wine

**Author's Note:**

> This is from the following tumblr prompts:
> 
> Autumn Fluff for Thirty Days:
> 
> 28\. Loaning the other their jacket but pretending they aren’t cold so the other doesn’t feel guilty
> 
> Fictober:
> 
> 2\. “People like you have no imagination.”

“It’s cold,” Thaia proclaimed within seconds of Kadara’s sun sinking below the mountainous horizon, golden rays tinged with pink hues still stretching upward.

Lexi personally didn’t believe it was overly chilly, but Thaia often responded to drops in ambient temperature as if she’d been raised in the tropics.

Which she had not been. 

Armali, where Thaia had been born and then subsequently raised for twenty years, had a temperate climate, even along the city-state’s coast. Thaia’s move at twenty to Nos Astra on Illium wasn’t a valid excuse either, because the colony’s cities were located in the higher latitudes to maintain a temperate climate within them. However, Thaia usually went to great effort to avoid the cold, so her choice puzzled and Lexi wanted to know why. “You’re the one who wanted to be out here in the first place.” 

“I didn’t think it’d be this cold.”

“Here, you can use my coat,” Lexi said as she removed it. She would be fine long enough in her long-sleeved Initiative shirt, despite the chill of the Kadara autumn evening. Being cold wasn’t the same as suffering from hypothermia, as Thaia was now complaining about succumbing to.

Thaia accepted the coat, but then gave both it and Lexi dubious looks.

Lexi resisted a sigh. “Give it a try. It’s more stretchy than you think.”

Another dubious look, but then she pulled it on. Emphasis on _pulled_. The arms weren’t much trouble—the material truly was stretchy—but the shoulders proved troublesome nearly to the point of impossible. In the end, she prevailed, but looked so ridiculous that Lexi’s well-honed ability to maintain a straight face was sorely tested.

Thaia frowned at herself.

Lexi resorted to hiding her mouth behind her hand, unable to decide which was the more absurd: Thaia in a medical lab coat, appearing the part of a doctor, or the fact that she looked as if taking one deep breath would burst the coat’s seams.

“I think,” Thaia said as Lexi crept incrementally closer to laughing out loud, “I’d rather be cold.” Then she tried to take off the coat.

Tried.

As Thaia contorted herself into all kinds of improbable yet also impressively flexible positions, Lexi’s laughter escaped. When Thaia ultimately tipped sideways and then fell to the frost-encrusted grass, Lexi lost control, doubling over with laughter.

“It’s trying to kill me and you’re _laughing_?” asked Thaia, betrayed.

It took Lexi a few moments to gather herself enough to give Thaia a decently remonstrative look. “You needn’t be so dramatic.”

“I’m not!” Thaia glared up at her. “This fucking coat is going to strangle me like one of those giant earth snakes Ryder talked about yesterday and you’re just going to stand there and watch me die.”

At least, that’s what Lexi thought she said, but it was hard to tell because Thaia had gotten her left arm over her head, now bent at an awkward angle, and had pulled the coat’s bottom front panel over the lower half of her face. Then she rolled partway over, the back of her shirt hiking up far enough that when she returned to her original position, her exposed skin made contact with the frost.

The sound Thaia made was nothing short of a shriek.

“Goddess, hold _still_ ,” said Lexi, desperately trying to hide her smile behind exasperation. “I can help you.”

“It’s so cold it’s burning my skin!” Thaia flailed her right arm and it got stuck behind the left, covering her entire face with the lab coat, along with pulling her shirt up far enough that Lexi could see a strip of bare skin above the waistband of Thaia’s pants.

Lexi had said she would help, but now she was presented with another opportunity entirely and she hadn’t said she would render aid _immediately_.

Her indecisive silence went on for too long.

“You wouldn’t,” said Thaia, finally stilling. “It would be cruel.”

“I would never be cruel.” Lexi glanced at the exposed skin again. “It’s really only your ankles where you’re ticklish?”

“I don’t think right now is a good time to discuss it.”

“I could just find out for myself.” She could, without cruelty, a simple test of a touch as she went to rescue Thaia from the apparent evil clutches of the lab coat.

Thaia continued to eye her warily. “You’re supposed to be the nice—“

Lexi reached out and ran a fingertip lightly along the enticingly bare skin.

“Please have mercy and help me out of this thing,” Thaia managed to say through squirming to escape and laughs smothered by the coat.

“All right.” Lexi encouraged her to sit, and then began the process of extricating Thaia from the coat. The moment Thaia was free, Lexi reclaimed her coat before Thaia could take revenge. Then she said, “Feel free to thank me for your freedom.”

Thaia scowled at the coat Lexi was putting back on and said nothing.

“Are you still cold?” Lexi asked.

“No.” Thaia craned her head around to look at her back. ”I think I got frostbite though. But I’m sweating, too. It’s confusing.”

She was. Lexi felt it when she gently but firmly repositioned Thaia’s head so that she didn’t sprain a muscle in her neck. Once Thaia cooperated, Lexi asked, “Why are we even out here?”

“It was supposed to be a date, since you said we never actually went on one.” Thaia waved a hand in the direction of the western horizon and then swiftly returned to hugging herself with her arms. “So, watching a picturesque sunset in the mountains, maybe with some more stolen wine that I forgot and left in the Nomad I borrowed from Ryder—“

“Borrowed or stole?”

“ _Borrowed._ ” She hopped in place in an attempt to stay warm. “Borrowed because Vetra said she’d tattle on me if I stole it.”

“To whom would she even tattle?”

“My dad.”

Lexi frowned in confusion. “Sula would have aided and abetted in any thievery.”

“Yeah, but if Vetra told her I wanted to boost it, Dad would be disappointed that I got caught.”

“How _did_ you get caught?” Because it wasn’t like a competent commando was ever easily caught in the act of anything, except by more competent commandos.

“Because I realized that if we were going to get drunk on stolen wine then we’d need a designated driver. And I asked Vetra because it’s something older sisters like to do, and she agreed. However, I’d forgotten how good at interrogation they are. Took her all of thirty seconds to break me and here we are.”

Lexi smiled at her, warm with affection, and then threaded her arm through the crook of Thaia’s elbow. “Even with the chill—”

“Freezing cold.”

“The perfectly seasonable autumn chill,” Lexi said, tone crisp because Thaia’s obstinance warranted it, “this was thoughtful of you. Did you have anything else planned?”

Thaia started them back down the trail. “I dunno, making out in the Nomad, maybe.”

Resisting another laugh, Lexi took back her arm and then pushed Thaia on the shoulder. “And you were doing so well.”

“It was your lab coat that tried to kill me in cold blood.” Thaia smirked at the wordplay and then reconsidered the coat, yet not with her usual admiration of how the lab coat highlighted some of Lexi’s physical attributes that Thaia favored. Instead, it was like she was evaluating an enemy. “We should burn that one. It’s gotten a taste for blood.”

Without warning, Lexi pulled up the back of Thaia’s shirt to make sure she hadn’t scraped anything on the rocky ground.

But Thaia legitimately shrieked when Lexi’s fingers skimmed across her skin. “Keep your freezing hands to yourself! I don’t need more frostbite on my frostbite!”

“First of all,” Lexi said as she removed her hands and let Thaia’s shirt fall back into place, “there’s no such thing. Second of all, you’re not even bleeding, so the coat hasn’t gotten ‘a taste for blood’ as you put it.”

Thaia rolled her eyes. “Fine, it’s gotten a taste for the torture of sentient beings and that’s the first step down the road to murder. Next thing we know, it’s sneaking out of the hamper in the dead of night and smothering me.“

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“It could happen.” They reached the Nomad parked at the bottom of the trail. Thaia halted and turned toward Lexi to make her final point. “Especially to people like you with no imagination because you’d never see it coming.”

Lexi sighed, but it didn’t mask her amusement. She reached up and traced the line of the tattoo over Thaia’s eye. Then, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say, she said, “I love you.”

“Because I’m ridiculous?”

“ _Despite_ it.” Which wasn’t entirely the truth. Thaia’s penchant for mischievousness was part of what Lexi did love about her. But outright telling Thaia so would only make it worse.

Thaia grinned, eyes alight in recognition of the lie Lexi could never have made remotely believable. “Want to go find someplace to drink the stolen wine I’d only share with someone I’m in love with?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”


End file.
